Ephesians 1:4
On Sunday I used this week’s verses to introduce the service from The Message to make it more accessible to our younger members, so I’ve used that here as well, but putting the NIV alongside it so you can compare them.
(MSG) 4 Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love…
(NIV) 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight…
I turned fifty this year. To me that sounds like a long time, I really can’t work out where it’s all gone! I have trouble making plans for tomorrow, let alone for a years time. Fifty years planning? No chance (at four I planned to be a professor of archeology, so I’m told, what did I know…) But God’s plan even before the world was made was to make us, to love us, to call us into a relationship with him. According to most scientists today, that’s some 4.5 billion years ago. How astonishing is that on so many scores! How astonishing that he should have so much love and make such long term plans, although God’s experience of time must be very different from ours.
I can’t quite believe that your love for us is so great, that your plans for us are so enduring. It’s hard to get our heads around. Our plans and love seem so fleeting in comparison. You truly are an awesome God.
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